The Abbotsford Police Department has issued a public warning about a man who has been described as “one of Canada’s most notorious child molesters.”
Police say that Shaun Joshua Deacon, 56, is being released Friday (March 18) from Matsqui Institution and will be living in the Abbotsford area.
Deacon has convictions for sexual offences against children in 1988, 1996 and 1998, as well as breaches of long-term supervision orders in 2002, 2009, 2014 and 2018, according to police.
According to the provincial court database, Deacon’s latest jail term was for three breaches of his long-term supervision order in July 2018. He was sentenced to three years and eight months in jail, and is now being released because he has served his full sentence.
The Parole Board of Canada, in a review of his detention order last October, voted to keep him in prison, saying he was at a high risk to re-offend.
Documents from that decision indicate that Deacon was found breaching his conditions in 2018 when he was working at a buisness with another convicted child sex offender and was in contact with another one.
He was arrested, and police then searched his work locker. According to the documents, police found electronic devices (which he wasn’t supposed to have), a folding knife, a black duty belt similar to what police wear, sex toys (including restraints) and “a large quantity of cold/flu and cough medicine, which, if provided to children, could make them sleepy or groggy.”
Deacon had also accessed the internet several times and had images images of children under 16, including some fully naked, the documents state.
According to previous news reports, Deacon was sentenced seven years in prison in the 1980s for assaulting four young children. While awaiting sentencing in Kelowna, he abducted a previous victim and assaulted the child again.
He re-offended and was jailed twice more in the 1990s.
While living in a halfway house after being released on a long-term supervision order in 2001, he was caught with a 10-year-old boy in his room.
Deacon’s long-term supervision order was suspended at least four times. One of those was linked to him having a photo of a young boy on his computer in 2004.
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According to court documents, one of the conditions imposed on him by the Parole Board of Canada in 2004 was that he “take medication as prescribed by a physician” to “reduce his deviant arousals.” He lost a 2006 bid to appeal that decision.
Deacon was the subject of warnings from the Vancouver Police Department in 2012, when he was released from a halfway house, and in 2015, when he was released from prison.
Deacon is described as six feet tall, 225 pounds and has brown hair and brown eyes.
His court-ordered conditions include a lifetime ban from attending public parks, swimming areas, school grounds, daycare centres, playgrounds or community centres where kids under the age of 14 are present or are expected to be present.
He also has a lifetime ban from working or volunteering in a capacity that involves being in a position of trust or authority towards anyone under 14 years old.
Deacon also currently has a ban on contact with kids under the age of 16 and is prohibited from possessing any electronics that can access the internet.
The Abbotsford Police Department says they will monitor Deacon while he is in the community, but anyone who sees him breaching his conditions is asked to immediately call the police department in their area (the number is 604-859-5225 in Abbotsford) or 911 if it’s an emergency.
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vhopes@abbynews.com
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